Walk through any supermarket today, and it’s clear the definition of “health food” has changed.
High-protein snacks now sit next to everyday staples. Functional drinks promise energy, focus or better sleep. Plant-based alternatives continue to expand. Gut health, immunity and low-sugar options are no longer niche categories. They are becoming part of how millions of consumers shop every week.
Wellness is no longer a trend, but a shift in how people think about food and lifestyle. And, while supermarket shelves have evolved quickly, the shopping experience itself often hasn’t kept pace.
For many consumers, grocery shopping still feels surprisingly generic. The promotions are broad, and product recommendations often miss the mark. Loyalty offers don’t always reflect what shoppers actually buy.
That gap matters because wellness is deeply personal. And increasingly, customers expect the retailers they shop with to recognise that.
Today’s wellness shopper expects relevance
Consumers today approach health and wellness with very different goals. One shopper might be focused on high-protein foods to support training. Another may be trying to reduce sugar or improve gut health. A family might be navigating food allergies or dietary restrictions.
Yet too often, they receive the same promotions, the same product suggestions and the same digital experiences. That’s a missed opportunity.
Research consistently shows that shoppers value personalisation when it’s done well. In fact, 83 percent of consumers say personalised shopping experiences are important and 74 percent are more likely to purchase when recommendations reflect their preferences, according to Amperity’s State of Personalisation in Retail research.
At the same time, many consumers still say their shopping experiences feel generic. For supermarkets, wellness categories are where this gap becomes most obvious. These purchases are intentional. They reflect lifestyle choices. And, customers increasingly expect retailers to understand those choices.
The challenge is customer insight
Most supermarkets already have the ingredients needed to deliver more personalised experiences.
Loyalty programmes capture purchase history. E-commerce platforms track browsing behaviour. Mobile apps record interactions. Marketing systems track campaign engagement.
But in many organisations, these data sources still live in separate systems.
When customer data is fragmented, it becomes difficult to see the complete picture of a shopper’s needs. The result is familiar to most consumers: irrelevant offers, poorly timed messages and recommendations that don’t reflect their actual preferences.
This disconnect is common across retail. Recent consumer research from Amperity found that more than half of shoppers still describe retail experiences as generic, highlighting the gap between the personalisation brands promise and what customers actually experience.
Retailers that are investing in unified customer data are starting to close that gap. When purchase behaviour, digital activity and loyalty data connect into a single customer profile, supermarkets can start delivering experiences that feel genuinely useful rather than purely promotional.
Continue reading more from Billy Loizou, GM & AVP at Amperity in the latest edition of C-store here
